The Piper's Tune (37 page)

‘I can't tell you.'

‘Can't tell me? I'm a partner, Forbes, in case you've forgotten.'

‘It's a state secret,' he said. ‘Sorry.'

‘Suit yourself,' Lindsay said.

He got up and flexed his arms in the chicken-wing manner that she had always considered both ugly and comical. He stepped out of his trousers and folded them across his arm. Lindsay went back to brushing her hair.

He said, ‘What you need is a lady's-maid.'

‘Oh, I see. You've another sister waiting with bags packed on the quay at Rosslare, have you?'

‘You shouldn't have to brush your own hair.'

She laughed: yesterday she would not have laughed. Yesterday she would have been incapable of raising a smile. She wondered what had changed. Something small, obviously, some small shift in balance. She did not know what had come over her or why on that cold January morning she had recognised ridicule for what it was and had allowed disappointment to alter in character, to become resentment. She laughed again and swung round, catching him unaware. He had lowered his striped drawers and, with his back to her, seemed to be admiring his parts or, perhaps, examining them critically. She could see his rather flat buttocks, very white, tapering down into hairy thighs. He looked, she thought, remarkably skinny, something that she hadn't noticed during her ‘illness'.

‘What have you been doing to yourself, Forbes?'

He shot round. ‘What?'

‘I do believe you're losing weight.'

‘Me? I'm fine. Nothing wrong with me. It's you yourself. Look at you. Skin and bone, just skin and bone.'

She glanced at herself in the side mirror. Her breasts were heavy but even through the nightgown she could discern the prominent ‘salt-cellars' that framed her collar bones and, no doubt about it, her arms
were
thin. She was willing to concede that perhaps she had lost the watery fat that had coated her body in the wake of her pregnancy but she did not take his criticism to heart, did not take it, or him, very seriously.

‘What if I am?' she said.

‘Sure and I'm not losing weight, am I?' he said, lifting his shirt.

‘You don't have to look at me. You don't even have to touch me.'

‘I'm just the same as I always was,' he said.

‘I don't think I need a lady's-maid, thank you, Forbes.'

‘It's muscle. I'm just lean by nature.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Yes, you are.'

He plucked at the winter drawers, drew them away from his thighs, peered down. ‘You may be right, though. Perhaps I am. Jesus!'

‘It'll be worry about the contract that's doing it.'

‘What contract?'

‘The secret contract for the Admiralty.'

The frown changed to a scowl, dark and severe. He stripped off his shirt, under-vest and drawers and threw them over a chair. He crabbed to the bed and got into it, punching at the bolster and then the pillow. He lay down, arms folded across his chest, nose pointing at the ceiling.

‘I don't want to talk about it, Lindsay.'

She put the silver-backed brush into its case and the case into the right-hand drawer of the dressing-table. She shook her hair, making it swing prettily. She was drawn, yes, but not ugly, not old. Good Lord, she wasn't even in the prime of her life, yet the man in the bed did not want her, her husband was no longer aroused by her. At least she had managed to cut through his indifference. For a moment or two they had even come close to bickering. Bickering, she supposed, was better than nothing.

She switched off the overhead light, shed the peignoir and felt her way through the darkness of the big bedroom, a darkness that had never seemed so complete and intense before marriage. She encountered the bed-end, the seam of the quilt and, groping, tugged back the blankets and sheets and slid in beside her husband.

Forbes stirred, moved away, made room for her. She could sense his truculence, his apprehension. He was still on his back, arms folded across his chest. She wriggled down beside him, deliberately letting her nightgown tighten and drag against her flanks. The inclination of the mattress threw her weight gently against him. He flinched and shifted another inch or two on to the upward slope. Even on this, the coldest night of the winter, he slept unclothed. He generated a little layer of heat but when she touched his shoulder she found that his flesh was icy cold as if the engine of his body had some original part to it that defied the laws of thermodynamics.

She laid an arm over his stomach. He breathed in stiff, short, bellows-like breaths. She hoisted herself a little higher until her cheek shared his pillow and her mouth was close to his ear.

‘Forbes,' she whispered urgently. ‘Forbes.'

‘What is it now?' he said.

‘Tell me about the Admiralty contract.'

‘For God's sake, Lindsay,' he growled, ‘go to bloody sleep.'

‘Thank you, dearest,' she said. ‘I will,' and with a chuckle that made his blood run cold, turned on her hip and rolled away.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Weapons of War

Soon after nine o'clock, she dressed Harry and, leading him by the hand, left the house. She walked to the rank at the corner of Sheddon Street where two motorised taxi-cabs stood aloof from a line of hansoms. She chose one of the old-fashioned ‘clip-clops' and lifted her son into it. He perched on the slippery seat, humming to himself as he gazed at the tall tenements, the tram-cars, all the bustle of the January morning streets. He looked, Lindsay thought proudly, quite a little gentleman in his new navy blue topcoat and pantaloons and a cap with velvet earflaps.

There had been quite a rumpus with Winn before they had left. Lindsay had almost lost her temper with the nursemaid who had protested that it was far too cold for a small boy to be taken out of doors, no matter how well wrapped up he was.

‘He will not be out of doors for long,' Lindsay had said.

‘Where are you going, then?' Winn had asked.

‘I don't think that is any of your business.'

‘What if Forbes telephones and wants to know where you are?'

‘Tell him we have gone shopping.'

‘You will be tiring Harry out, you know.'

‘I don't think so, Winn.'

‘What about the poor baby?'

‘Poor baby?'

‘He will be hungry.'

‘I will be back long before Philip needs fed again,' Lindsay said. ‘But if I am much after twelve o'clock you may give him a bottle.'

Still protesting, Winn had trailed her down to the hallway and had demanded, ‘Where are you going? Where are you taking him?' as if she, Lindsay, were planning an abduction.

Stubbornly, Lindsay had refused to answer.

It was not until the hansom trundled into Aydon Road that Harry turned to her and said, ‘Are we going to see Papa?'

‘Yes, Harry, we are going to visit our shipyard.'

‘To see Papa?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘And Grandee's boats?'

‘Oh, yes, and Grandee's boats.'

‘Hurrah!' the little boy yelled, throwing out his arms. ‘Hurrah!' as if he had been awaiting this moment from the day of his birth.

*   *   *

‘Why, if it isn't Miss Frank— I mean, Mrs McCulloch,' Sergeant Corbett said. ‘It's a pleasure to see you again. And who might this be, ma'am?' He stooped, hands on knees, and inspected Harry critically. ‘Is this the first-born?'

‘It is, Sergeant. His name is Harry.'

‘Welcome to Franklin's, young man,' Sergeant Corbett said. ‘I hope we'll be seeing a lot of you in future.'

Harry stared up at the broad leather belt and mutton-chop whiskers and enquired, ‘Are you a soldier?'

‘I used to be a soldier, aye.'

‘When I'm big I'm going to be a soldier,' Harry said.

‘A fine soldier you'll make, I'm sure,' said Sergeant Corbett, then to Lindsay, ‘There's no management meeting today, ma'am.'

‘I know, Sergeant.'

‘I think Mr McCulloch is out this mornin'.'

‘And my father?'

‘He's upstairs. Will I ring for him to come down?'

‘I'll go up. We'll both go up, if we may.'

‘Is this the laddie's first visit?'

‘It is.'

‘Then he'll be wanting to see the boats.'

‘Boats,' Harry said. ‘I want to see the boats.'

‘First,' Lindsay said, ‘we'll go and find Grandee.'

‘Is Grandee on a boat?'

‘I don't think so.' Lindsay took her son by the hand and directed him towards the main staircase. ‘Perhaps, if he has time, Uncle Thomas might take you down to see the boats.'

‘Is Uncle Thomas on a boat then?'

‘Mr Calder,' the sergeant said, ‘is in the mould loft with a party.'

‘What sort of party?' Lindsay asked.

‘A party from the Admiralty,' Sergeant Corbett said.

*   *   *

The long wooden-walled corridor on the second floor of the block was situated directly above the boardroom and the offices that opened from it were occupied entirely by Franklins and their kin. At one time there had been space for all departments on the upper floors but over the years Owen's sons and grandsons had claimed priority, all except Tom Calder who was quite content with his cubicle at the end of the drawing-office. Forbes, however, had complained bitterly about having to share space with Johnny and Ross and had insisted on being given an office of his own next door to Martin's.

The clack of typewriting machines flooded up from the clerks' room, the brutal thud of a power punch, the shriek of a saw and the clang of riveters belting on hammers sifted in even through windows sealed against the frost that held Clydeside in its grip. Lindsay heard men whistling and, like mammoths trumpeting, the hoots of bum-boats and tugs and the ineffable churning of propellers from the miasmic waters that stretched into the frozen haze.

Harry too heard these sounds, his first experience of the rhythms of a song that would sit close to his heart: no Kerry Dance, no piper's tune, no sentimental ditty recalling days that were dead and gone or that had never been, but an overture to the future. Eyes wide and ears pricked, Harry accompanied it, making up his own little song as he went along.

Arthur was delighted to see them. Surprised too. Somehow it had not occurred to him that his grandson was of an age to be brought to the yard. He swept the boy into his arms, carried him to the window and stood him on the narrow ledge over the steam pipes.

‘Boats!' Harry said. ‘Boats, Grandee! I see the boats.'

Her father's room was cluttered. He shared the old Founder's Office with Donald now. Racks of plans in brown-cloth folders and tall teak filing cabinets backed the desk. Donald was out on the road with Martin. Ross and Johnny too were out of the office, and of Forbes there was no sign behind the pebble-glass door that bore his name.

Lindsay watched her son and father fondly. Her father's hands were on Harry's waist, Harry's palms pressed against the window, his cap askew. As they surveyed the slips and rails and jibs that lay before them in the dead, dunning January cold, the bond between the generations had never seemed stronger.

‘Wha's 'at, Grandee?'

‘That's a destroyer, son, for chasing torpedo-boats.'

‘Big-gun boats?'

‘Yes, guns, but we haven't put the guns on yet. Do you see the men on their knees? They are fitting the deck, the place where the sailors will stand.'

‘Wha's 'at?'

‘Oh, that,' Arthur Franklin said. ‘That's a boiler, for boiling the water to make the steam.'

‘For the tea?'

‘No, it's too big for tea. Steam, to drive the engines.'

‘Wha's 'at?'

‘A crane. If we wait a wee bit we'll see it turning.'

‘Wha's it doing?'

‘Lifting steel plates up to the second deck.'

‘Where the sailors stand.'

‘Absolutely.'

‘Wha's that noise, Grandee?'

‘The saw in the wood-frame shop. A circular saw, for cutting wood.'

‘For the fire?'

‘Not quite, son,' said Arthur. ‘Would you like to go down and watch the saw cutting timber?'

‘Yes.'

‘Would you like to see the boats?'

‘YES.'

Lindsay said, ‘If you're too busy, Papa, perhaps Tom could spare a few minutes.'

‘To give my grandson his first tour of Franklin's? No, no,' Arthur said. ‘I'm not handing that privilege over to Tom Calder, no matter how busy I am.'

‘Where is Forbes, by the way?'

‘Gone off to Beardmore's, I believe, to discuss special castings.'

‘In the motor-car, with Gowry?'

‘Naturally,' said Arthur.

*   *   *

Mr Albert Hartnell and his daughter had been resident in St Mungo's Mansions for so long that the motor-car and the gentleman caller who got out of it had become an accepted part of the scene. It would have been naïve of Albert to pretend that his neighbours did not know what racket he was in or what the young man was up to when he vanished into the close at the rear of the building. Besides, Mr Hartnell was by no means the only person in the Mansions who had secrets worth keeping. Albert knew more about other folks' business than they did about his which was, he reckoned, as good a safeguard as any against inquisitiveness and disapproval.

Even Mrs O'Connor who lived across the landing with her cat Snowball and her crotchety maid Evelyn had a secret not so far removed from the secret that Sylvie lived with. Mrs O'Connor's revenue, Albert had discovered, came from interest in shares left her by three grateful gentlemen who had wives and children and posthumous reputations to protect even although they were personally long past caring. In fact, if the self-appointed widow had been ten or a dozen years younger, on the sunny side of sixty, say, Albert would not have been averse to marrying her to secure himself a comfortable old age.